A Fate Worse Than Death
by Vivienne Grainger - Bleach
Summary: If you are already dead, what is that?  Rangiku finds out.


The yakuza herein are left unnamed simply because if their comrades found out I knew their names, I'd be dead too, and it's quite difficult to post fanfic from Soul Society.

Not mine, Tite Kubo's; not for profit.

* * *

"Y'see," said Yakuza #1, smacking one fist into the other, and leering suitably at his intended victim, "there's missing a payment or two, which we thought we took care of. And then there's what you been doing, which is something else altogether."

Hiro Watanabe, who was bound to a chair, remained silent.

Yakuza #2, less patient than his comrade, belted Watanabe across the face with a roundhouse left. "Somethin' we don' like," he added for good measure.

"Now, gentlemen," said Yakuza #3, who was the only one of the trio Watanabe feared. "I'm sure we can negotiate our way to a happy ending here."

Watanabe remained silent and refused to hope. He knew "we" could not. He also knew that he had used the violence group's money to ensure his family's future, since he himself was dying of cancer at the age of twenty-eight ... all that was asked of him to complete his end of the bargain he'd struck with the gods was silence during this difficult interview on just where the money was. That he could do.

It would not be pleasant, but Hiro Watanabe was a courageous man.

An hour earlier, he got the phone call that the three yakuza from whose boss he had borrowed two hundred billion yen were coming to his pawnshop. When their knock sounded on the door, he'd gone into the restroom and cut out his own tongue.

* * *

The day following this unpleasant exchange, the soutaichou of the Gotei-13, who did not often have truck with fukutaichou for any reason, frowned at Rangiku Matsumoto. "Unless you have a very good reason to offer me for abating this punishment, you will spend the next two months actually doing paperwork. I know Hitsugaya's brushwork, you see, so it had better be yours I see coming from Tenth Division. And are these bruises the result of your missed rendezvous?"

"No, sir, more like the cause."

"Elucidate," the old man said. "And it had better be good, because I have the bill from Urahara for replacing your gigai. _Yet again._"

Rangiku sighed. She began, "It was a dark and stormy night ..."

* * *

It _was_ a dark and stormy night; given the cycles of Earth's weather, it has to be that somewhere most nights, and Karakura Town had drawn the short straw this evening.

Rangiku Matsumoto, fukutaichou to Toshiro Hitsugaya of the Tenth Division of the Gotei-13, was as courageous as Hiro Watanabe in her own way. For Rangiku, though, there was no point to fear; she was dead, so the worst had already happened.

That said, she did not like bringing her gigai back to the Urahara Shoten, or even Twelfth Division, dinged up.

She didn't like to bring it back damaged to Urahara's because the erstwhile taichou would pick up her former self by the scruff of the neck, sigh, and say, "You sure you don't want a boob job while I'm at this?" After she declined, which she always did, he billed soutaichou for the repairs necessary to keep the thing running. And soutaichou docked Rangiku's pay for the same amount.

That left less for saké and super-reinforced lace bras.

She didn't like bringing them back dinged to Twelfth Division because ... well, let's be blunt. Would _you_ want Mayuri Kurotsuchi poking around something you put underpants on?

And beyond this, it was annoying and/or painful to function in a dinged-up gigai, so generally, Rangiku avoided damaging her gigai as assiduously as she shunned hard work.

Right now, she wished she had remembered that Tokyo's rush hour period lasted from four to seven p.m. She hadn't, and had suffered the attentions of multiple elbows as a result. She hurt in various places, and a quick check of herself in the windows of the clothes shops whose wares she had been ogling revealed many purple splotches. Now, in the cold rain falling in Karakura Town, she was getting stiff as well as cold, and the bruises were becoming more painful.

Rangiku shivered as she went at a fast dog-trot along the path next to the river. She wasn't dressed for the cold rain, because it hadn't been falling when she returned with her shopping to the shoten. It had started when she got on the train to the have a last meal at the food carts, only to encounter the elbows of rush hour. She hadn't meant to spend so much time window-shopping for clothes after eating, either, but when she next glanced at a clock it was far, far past the time she should have left. She was going to be late back for rendezvous, and what Hitsugaya-taichou would have to say to her did not really bear thinking about.

So she didn't think about it. She quickened her pace instead.

While Rangiku jogged in the direction of the shoten, the yakuza pulled into the parking lot available to those who wanted to spend some time by the river.

"Cheated us," Yakuza #2 grumbled, with Yakuza #1 wresting the chair holding the body of Hiro Watanabe out of the back of the stolen white van.

"You may say so," said Yakuza #3, considerably more intelligent than either of his compatriots, and thereby the Man In Charge of Operation Watanabe. "I rather admire his strategy myself."

Hiro Watanabe had maintained his silence through all of the things Yakuzas #1 and 2 had been able to do to him, right up until the point where they punched him in the stomach. That drove the huge mouthful of blood he had been saving up out into the room, and not coincidentally all over Yakuza #2.

The tongue is vascularized by two arteries which run under it. Sever an artery and, unless it is a very small one, you will inexorably bleed to death. Hiro Watanabe had promptly done so, and thereby saved himself from the truly nasty longuers of persuasion at the command of Yakuzas #1, #2, and #3.

Hiro Watanabe's body was not simply left where he died because the amount of damage he had sustained was too small to keep up the violence group's reputation. Hiro Watanabe would make the acquaintance of the fishes as bedfellows instead.

Yakuza #1 and 2 each picked up one side of the chair Hiro Watanabe, dead but triumphant, was still tied to, and began to make their way to the river.

* * *

At about this time, at the Urahara Shoten, Toshiro Hitsugaya paced back and forth. "Where the hell is she? She didn't take her phone."

Kisuke Urahara, who was himself looking a little less laid-back than usual, said, "Sorry, but I have no way to track her gigai."

Toshiro nodded shortly. He didn't particularly want to have gigai traced himself. It was not that he would ever, in a million years, get up to what Rangiku carried on with in the Living World. However, he occasionally wanted the freedom to be a kid where no one from Soul Society could see him do so. Because if they did, they would subsequently twit him about it. And he didn't like that. It was an assault on his dignity, a dignity difficult to maintain because he looked like he was, say, eight, and his peers all _looked like_ (an operative phrase if ever there were one) they were fully adult.

"Did she say where she was going?"

"The food carts at Karakura Mall, I believe."

Toshiro stepped out of his own gigai, and stowed it neatly under Urahar's benign eye. "Back as soon as I find her. If the General asks where I am, tell him."

Urahara nodded, and the young taichou leaped through the window of the shoten.

* * *

The rain worsened. Rangiku, her gigai wet to the skin, took shelter beneath a bridge support.

From the shadows, she watched three men, two of them carrying something between them, approach the river, the lights of Karakura beyond the water. They stopped, balanced their burden, which its background of lights revealed to be a man in a chair, on the stone wall which served as a dike -

"Hey! What are you doing? Stop that!" Rangiku came pelting out from under the bridge. "Stop that! What are you going to do, drown him? No!"

Yakuza #3 fielded her expertly, and Hiro Watanabe went under with a splash. However, as he shared with Rangiku the quality of being already dead, he did not drown.

Moments later, Hitsugaya landed near the bridge, unable to believe what he'd just seen. He pulled out his cell phone and called the shoten. "Urahara, listen - I've found Rangiku. I'm at the northernmost bridge over the river. Two men have just thrown a third, who was tied to a chair, into the water. Call the human cops, will you?"

Rangiku was tall for a Japanese woman, but Yakuza #3 had an inch or so on her. He twisted one arm up behind her back, and kept it there. "Well, well," he said to his cohorts, "look what we have here. The boss's been wanting one of these."

Rangiku promptly kicked him quite painfully in the shin, and twisted herself free. However, three of them were too much for her, and a few very busy minutes later, she was held by Yakuzas # 1 and 2, while #3 stood in front of her, dabbing at a split lip.

"Well," he said with a nasty leer. "The boss is going to enjoy this one. But I think we should get first dibs."

Numbers one and two wisely said nothing, nor did Rangiku. She, however, was silent because Hitsugaya-taichou had landed behind #3.

He put his hands on his hips, as he heard the wail of sirens behind him. "Come on, Matsumoto. Time to go."

"Little problem with that," Rangiku said, tilting her head first toward one, then the other, of her captors.

"Oh? And what might that be?" said Yakuza #3.

"I wasn't talking to you," Rangiku said.

Yakuza #3 said, smirking, "You better, lady. That way, you might survive."

Hitsugaya said, "Just get out of your gigai."

"What?"

Although the comment was addressed to Hitsugaya, Yakuza #3 replied. "You heard me, girl. The boss's been wanting a redhead in his stable, maybe in his bed, for a while. You'll do, but only if I'm convinced you're safe to bring to him. You fail that test, we off you right here."

Ignoring #3, "Can you get out of your gigai without a ginkogan?" Hitsugaya asked.

"I think so. Why?"

"You'd better know so," said #2.

"And 'why' is pretty self-evident, isn't it?" said #3, caressing the Rangiku Hills.

She kicked him in the crotch this time, and simultaneously jumped backward out of the gigai. "Dammit! My foot's stuck!" she said, as the gigai twitched its leg, following the only point of anchor.

Yakuza #1 and #2 dropped the limp body to the ground, and began to kick it. Still attached, Rangiku felt every blow.

Three kicks, five kicks, nine kicks later, Hitsugaya came around behind her, put both hands under her arms, and pulled her out, just as a million-candlepower light beam illuminated the area. Tokyo police shouted, "Stop! Hands up!"

The three yakuza turned slowly toward the light, their hands raised, as Matsumoto's gigai flopped lifeless at their feet.

Epilogue No. 1:

Hiro Watanabe's family found that he had taken out several substantial life insurance policies on himself. And the condition of his body, when found, utterly precluded suicide: the insurance companies gulped and paid up.

Epilogue No. 2:

"Let's get this straight," soutaichou said, laying down Urahara's neatly-itemized bill, including one line titled, "Extremely large boobs, with extra-heavy chest wall and super-sized spinal muscles to support same." "I can dock her pay for the loss of the gigai. I'd choose not to, after hearing her story, but dammit, these things are expensive."

Hitsugaya shrugged. "Give her another two weeks in the office," he said. "I'm enjoying the break I get when I don't have to do all the Division's paperwork. Write it off as my vacation this year."

"Deal," said soutaichou. "That leaves only twenty-four thousand yen. That's what, two days' saké?"

"This is Matsumoto we're talking about," Hitsugaya said. "A day and a half, tops."

Soutaichou grinned. "Still. No saké. And the worst part about it is, she'll have to sign off on it herself."

Epilogue No. 3:

The head of the violence group shrugged. "I'm down three members," he said to his cousin. "Two meatheads, one guy who had a brain. They all got life for the murder of that redhead."

Epilogue No. 4:

That redhead, sweating in the heat of the office on a bright, sunny day, thumbed her hair out of her eyes, thought longingly of the saké she could not afford, and did more paperwork.


End file.
